I think I (sort of) hate this quilt.

This past August I was invited to join the ‘Voyage’ International Textile Artists Group and immediately said yes. As with joining the 20 Perspectives, my aim was to boost my creativity, have something to work towards, giving me some kind of anchorage in this terrible year 2024, hoping, it would all turn out for the better.

At first, I had said I would most likely not be able to contribute to the group’s upcoming exhibition at BMO ’25, thinking it would prove to be too much stress to whip out a quilt in the short amount of time I would have once we finished our move. Especially as the topic ‘alchemy’ didn’t exactly cause a flood of ideas that asked to be put into a quilt.

When we started unpacking all our boxes in the new apartment, however, the first thing I put on the design wall was a conglomeration of fabrics with a special meaning, because I had come up with an idea after all. Searching the internet for a definition led me, of course, to Wikipedia, and the German page defines the term ‘alchemy’ as „die Lehre von den Eigenschaften der Stoffe und ihren Reaktionen“, i.e. the doctrine of the characteristics of elements/materials and their reactions with each other. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemie)

The German noun “Stoffe”, however, also means ‘fabrics’, which gave me a short cut for my interpretation. Fabrics have a relationship and some kind of reaction when they are put next to each other, especially when sewn together, and when special fabrics are joined, the alchemy between them takes off. I decided to pair some of my special fabrics that were all waiting to be used: rust dyed fabric pieces I had brought home from my trip to South Africa, an indigo dyed scarf, the kimono from my collage project with Kathleen Loomis. I discovered that the pattern on the indigo dyed scarf, which I liked in its design but didn’t wear much because it felt too narrow, was off-set a bit when folded in half: the patterns don’t exactly match. Which I really like a lot.

 

The rust-dyed pieces came home with me from South Africa, and I love them for their coloring, intensity of pattern, and, of course, because they remind me of the trip to Krueger Park and the quilt festival at Johannesburg.

 

Alchemy, in my understanding for this quilt, is not only restricted to the interaction of chemical elements, but I am extending it to fabrics, when placed next to each other. Putting it all together felt good, and after a bit of turning and changing I liked to layout, too.

First attempt - but it got turned around.

 

However, as I had noticed before in another context, but completely forgotten, the rusted fabrics from South Africa are so tightly woven that they are VERY difficult to sew, which was the reason why I had not used these particular fabrics up yet. Sewing them was hard for the machine, and quilting over them caused multiple thread breakages, disruptions in the quilting process and unpleasant loops on the backside. I was indeed getting to the point where I could have thrown this piece out of the window!

 

Deciding on a quilting design then proved another challenge. Yet when I started reading former chancellor Angela Merkel’s memoir that was published recently, and read the section on her most famous (or infamous) statement throughout the 16 years of her chancellorship, I thought it would be interesting to add another layer of alchemy. The quote is from 2016, when Germany was facing the massive influx of more than one million Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country, and quite a few other refugees from several other countries. Chancellor Merkel said that Germany had faced so many difficult situations and overcome them, and that we would be able to deal with and overcome this challenge as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDQki0MMFh4

Interestingly enough, her full statement was hardly ever quoted, but reduced to the three-word-phrase ‘we will manage’. Events following this massive influx of refugees had and still have quite an alchemic-like effect on German society, which I myself felt vividly while I was trying to accompany refugees through the maze of German administration, rules and regulations, giving them guidance for everyday life in a country that is rather different from their own. For this quilt on alchemy I decided to put as much of the quote onto the quilt surface as would fit, and except for a few last words, most of it is on there.

 

Yes, I hated the quilting because of the difficulties with the densely woven fabric. No, I don’t think it is one of my strongest quilts. But it is giving a platform for some of my favorite fabrics, and it includes a statement for which I still admire our former chancellor. At this particular moment it is still not clear whether we have indeed managed to deal with the crisis, our current political situation is partly due to that refugee crisis (combined with problems going back to German reunification, and probably even further back). And in the end I don’t really hate this quilt. But it made a good title for this post (which I started some time in December and am only now finding time to finish).

 

Addendum: This quilt will be on display together with the other Voyage quilts in the collection "Alchemy" at the Scottish Quilt Show in Glasgow in March and at the Brno Patchwork Meeting in April.

African Fabrics and scraps of life

 As I was doing some gardening the other day, trying for yet another field of sunflowers

and preparing and sowing a space on the side of the lawn where I want butterflies and bees to hang out

and enjoying my abundance of tulips

I also encountered this water-filled wheel-barrow (with a disfunctional tyre, definitely need to get that fixed!) 

 

and thought about what an interesting place to put some eco-dyeing in this might be if I were attracted to that activity. As it is, I only took photos and a little video and went back to digging, listening to the birds, trying to identify them with my app ("uncertain analysis - human", when our noisy machine-prone neighbor is again running one of his zillions of machines) and thinking about life and passage of time.

Yesterday evening I sank the last threads on my baby's 18th birthday quilt

and as we were burning the birthday candles this morning

on the birthday train that has been serving us since his completion of the first trip around the sun - it has been lacking the appropriate numbers for many years now because they stop at 6, I mean, who would stop using this train when the child starts going to school? (but, note to self: it might be worth looking for additional numbers, perhaps...) - my feeling of slight melancholia at this progression in his life span continued. He is in the middle of final High School Exams, so no grand party today as he has an exam tomorrow, but he took the car entirely by himself this morning, no more assisted driving. I never gave a thought to how my mother felt as her three children turned into adults one by one on this conventional date of beginning of adulthood. I wasn't even home, I was spending the year in the US, and to be honest, I don't have much of a memory of how we spent the day there... 

In any case, this is the finished birthday quilt, with all threads sunk - please excuse the bad lighting.

My listening experiences during commutes to work have recently given me more intricate knowledge about the history of African Wax fabrics, which I have liked for a long time, albeit not used much in my quilting or making. The Haptic&Hue podcast episode on African Wax cloth is a rich reservoir of details and information that I absolutely enjoyed listening to, even though I had known some of the aspects connected with the topic. The vibrancy of the colors and the pride connected to wearing these fabrics is very impressive. I had not known the entirety of the colonization process that lies behind this story however, and it made me think more intensively about how much the world is connected, how little of our daily things we 'use' or understand as pure, or traditional or 'ours' remains just that. It makes the entire discussion around "cultural appropriation" just a lot more complicated. (There is a shop in Munich, including an online store, where you can buy traditionally cut Dirndl-dresses made from African Fabrics: Noh Nee. Which side is appropriating which in this case? The dresses are gorgeous - and if I were ever to wear a Dirndl, it would be one of theirs... I think I will take a detour on a trip tomorrow to finally go and look at this shop, which I have been wanting to do for a long time.)

When one of my senegalese friends went home to visit her family recently I asked her whether she would mind to bring me back a 'bag of scraps' from the market, because I had an idea for making a quilt. She has recently returned - and this is the bag of scraps she brought:

It's big. And sewn together.

She says she tried several times, explaining what she wanted, but the merchants would not comply, even though they agreed they would save some scraps in the next days. Every time she came back, they had sewn them together already, giving the younger sewists practising time on sewing on the maching, and wanting to sell the top. She says she had told them she would pay the same price for the weight or whatever they wanted - no chance. Finally, she went ahead and bought a whole top, suggesting I should just cut it upand make from it whatever I was planning to do. That I can't get myself to do right now - because I hate unpicking, for one thing, and just cutting it up feels disrespectful to the tailor's work. 

I may take off just two or three of the strips and cut those up for what I was planning. That way the entire piece would remain sort of intact - I could add a border? and quilt it? because it is unfaced right now - and still start on my African Scraps quilt... Well, right now there are a few other things in the pipeline, I can still think about it for a little while.

How to Make An African Quilt (Diary of recovery!)

This post was mostly written before the SAQA Europe/Middle East regional zoom meeting yesterday evening. The meeting did not have a specific topic to begin with, but the Rep’s guiding question of ‘to do and not to to lists’ got the group talking about how we are feeling in these times of uncertainty, pandemic and everything that comes with it – lockdowns, restrictions, canceled opportunities to exhibit, to travel and to meet at venues, or workshops that had to be postponed, perhaps for a repeated time. And during that conversation I realized that the making of the African quilt that I describe in the following lines is right down that path many of us mentioned – we want to be making, but we are somewhat blocked about making art. Quite a few of us have turned to making ‘functional quilts’, at least temporarily. While I have always made a functional quilt in between or alongside art quilts, it has become more difficult to make art quilts during the past few months, and having completed this African quilt was a good step for me and my well-being.

During the last few years I have been in close contact with a few African refugees (West Africa – Senegal) here in our town, and have learned a lot from them. A better appreciation of rain, for example – “rain’s a blessing” said Mariama once when I was complaining about a rainy grey and ugly fall day as we have so many in Germany. Or that we should take things with a lighter heart, a repeated suggestion from my special protegé – but I admit that that is a theoretical knowledge on my part only (so far?) - I am not good at taking things easy. Although I am much better at it when my African friends are around who make me laugh! It is always amazing how they refuse to be brought down by the difficulties they encounter in the ‘person’ of German bureaucracy and legislation, how they maintain a smile on their face, how they easily make one laugh and are always good to crack a joke, or tell us that everything is fine (although I know by the date of the month how far the ‘water level’ in their wallet is gone down).

And I have looked at fabrics from Africa differently, too. I am in a process of using a piece of mudcloth I brought back from South Africa last year (my, that’s long ago! we could travel!). And I have another piece of mudcloth that is biding its time for a good idea an be an accomplice to this one.

 

I recently finished a quilt from a large piece of West African fabric I acquired at Festival of Quilts from the wonderful AfricanFabric Shop  where I always go when I get to FoQ. I have bought a beautiful basket from them, too – not a good idea before going home on the plane, but I managed.

So when one of my African friends complained that his room in the refugee accomodation, very small but his very own, was so cold because it has three walls that go to the outside of the house and the heating system is not exactly up to modern standards, I went ahead and started making him a quilt. It needed to be done quickly, and he has a slightly different preference for colors than I do, so I relied on that African fabric as the main ‘backbone’ for a free cut drunkard’s path, which you can see in the lower part of the picture.

 

Of course, it wasn’t entirely enough, I added another indigo-dyed West-African fabric as accocmpaniment, as can be seen in the upper half of the picture.

This is a picture as I was putting the blocks together:

 

I put together a back fabric from several different fabrics and a superfluous block from the front.

 

And I used my circular quilting templates for the quilting (only the 4” template hasn’t resurfaced yet).

 

The finished piece looks like this:

Of course, it is not strictly speaking an African quilt. It is a quilt made from a few fabrics that originated in Africa, and it was made for a friend from Africa, but everything else about it just makes it a quilt blanket like any other quilt blanket. But a nice one, the recipient likes it and feels warmer sleeping under it. And life goes on, even as we are confined to a new ‘lockdown’ (light version).